Nokia N8 Vasco photos and delays

The Nokia N8, the Finnish mobile phone company’s answer to the Apple iPhone, is likely to have a delayed debut. The grapevine has it that enthusiasts will have to extend their wait for the N8 ‘Vasco’ until this summer. We think that Vasco is an internal code-name for the product.

Meanwhile, images of the Nokia N8 touchscreen smartphone spotted in the wild. We have one of them here for you. Many long-time Nokia observers have been dropping hints on what the upcoming Nokia device would look like. Going by what we see, the Nokia N8 is most likely to come with a 3.5-inch touchscreen, plus a 12-megapixel camera enhanced by the presence of a Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash.

What many are interested in is the UI and software – great hardware and camera is nothing without a brilliant UI and software, as the Motorola Droid, Nexus One, HTC HD2 and the iPhone have consistently proven. What Nokia has managed to build into the N8 with Symbian^3 would be interesting for sure. Especially as the last two smartphones form the company – the Nokia N97 and the Nokia N97 Mini were not great successes. The Nokia N900 was a techie hit with its great OS and specifications, but that is not a mass market product yet.

It is also being speculated that the Nokia N8 could sport capabilities to play back HD video on television sets via a HDMI connection. It is also being said that the new N8 could come featuring an external SIM card slot so that additional storage capacity for the 32GB of onboard memory could be provided. When a Summer date is being rumored, we have enough reason to believe that the handset powered by a 1GHz snapdragon processor, would arrive sometime in July. If you would remember, the company had earlier set a may date for launch.

Also known as the N8-00, the handset will be the first Nokia handset that would come with the open source Symbian operating system, Symbian ^3. Seen by the industry as a direct replacement for the ageing N97 model, the N8 will be pitted against the HTC Evo, Incredible and Desire models , the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and Apple’s own iPhone 4G. Now, that could be some good competition ahead.

We are yet to hear anything on the Nokia N8 pricing front too, though the details could be on their way.

Image leak or not, The Nokia N8 could well be the cell phone manufacturer’s prestigious device when it rolls out this summer. The competitors are kind of mighty and Nokia will have a battle ahead to stay somewhere on the surface.

Nokia, in the meantime, has unveiled three handsets – the C3, C6 and E5 – with a focus on social networking capabilities.